Bryce Harper to the Phillies is one more bad day for the Mets

There was the day in 1977 that M. Donald Grant, in a fit of pique, traded future Hall of Famer Tom Seaver away for the equivalent of a sack of baseballs. There was the day future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine, needing only to beat the last-place Florida Marlins on the final day of the 2007 season to put his team into the playoffs, allowed seven runs in the first inning. There was the night Carlos Beltran, potential Hall of Famer, looked at a third strike to end the 2006 NLDS.

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And there was the evening just two years ago that Mr. Met flipped the bird to a group of fans on his way out of the ballpark.

To that ignominious list add now Thursday, February 28, 2019. That was the day Bryce Harper changed uniforms, but not divisions.

And it was the day that the Mets, who professed to be changing their culture, did what the Mets have almost always done.

The Mets should be used to seeing Harper. Now they'll see busloads of Phillie fans every time he's in town. (Kathy Willens / AP)

For all intents and purposes, the Yankees declared themselves out of the Harper hunt more than a year ago, when they chose to trade for Giancarlo Stanton and his onerous contract, which has nine more seasons to run. Plus, their payroll was already north of $215 million.

But the Mets had no such constraints, either on their roster or their payroll. And with Yoenis Cespedes sidelined indefinitely, they had an immediate need for a power bat in their outfield. Still, they never even bothered to pretend to be interested in Harper.

Because practically no news is ever all bad, let’s start with the bright side of the 13-year, $330 million deal Harper signed with the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday.

His presence in their lineup practically assures the Mets of nine sellouts in 2019, a feat they accomplished just four times in 2018: Opening Day, David Wright Night on the final week of the season, and twice when the Yankees came to Flushing. The first one is scheduled for April 22, when the Phillies come to town for three games. Get your tickets while they last.

And if Harper lives up to his end of the bargain and performs like one of the two or three best players in baseball until the year 2032, the Mets could fill their park 117 times with Phillies fans willing to make the 90 mile drive north.

But that’s where the good news ends. And the bad news just never seems to stop.

While in his time as a Washington National Harper hasn’t been the kind of Met killer Daniel Murphy became, he’s been pretty good in 109 career games and 397 at-bats, with 23 homers, 67 RBI, a .272 batting average and .880 OPS. That translates to 34 and 100 over a full season.

And now, they get to continue facing him 19 times a year.

Harper will see the Mets 19 times a year. (Nick Wass / AP)

But it’s not only Harper playing for the Phillies that is bad news for the Mets; the Phillies decision to invest that much time and money into him, without an opt-out, tells you they plan to be serious players in the NL East for quite some time now. Remember, they also added J.T. Realmuto, for a time purported to be on the Mets radar, as well as former NL MVP Andrew McCutchen, who showed he still had some baseball left in his short stint with the Yankees last year, David Robertson and Jean Segura.

Their potentially dominant starting rotation notwithstanding, only the most optimistic Mets fan could rate them better than third in the NL East right now, behind the Phillies and the defending division champ Atlanta Braves.

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The most frustrating thing is Harper could so easily have been a Met instead of a Phillie.

As of now, the Mets payroll stands at approximately $165 million. At the reported comparative bargain price of $25.8 million for 2019 – Harper also gets a $20 million signing bonus up front – the Mets could have added him and remained comfortably below the $206 million luxury tax threshold.

The Phillies, who exist in a much smaller TV market, were willing to add that expense on to their already-$140 million payroll. Financially-speaking, they’ve shown they’re willing to compete with clubs such as the Yankees, the Red Sox and the Dodgers, something the Mets never have.

Instead, despite hiring Brodie Van Wagenen as the GM and signaling that they intend to do business in a more competitive way, the Mets wound up settling for Robinson Cano, a talented player who is 36 years old and coming off an 80-game drug suspension; Jed Lowrie, who had a good season in Oakland last year but is 34, injured and may start the season on the injured list; and Edwin Diaz, a promising closer.

None of that adds up to a Bryce Harper, or a Manny Machado, who the Mets also never took a serious look at. It remains to be seen if what the Mets did this off-season even adds up to a contender.

As incredible as it may seem that the two biggest free agents of our generation, Harper and Machado, wound up playing in Philadelphia and San Diego, it might even be more incredible that neither one ended up in New York.

And the one that should have wound up playing here will instead be playing just 90 minutes down the Jersey Turnpike, and dropping in repeatedly for the next 13 years.